Gone are the days of brown paper sacks and soft ham sandwiches. Now, for $55, you can purchase a lunch box that streamlines meal planning, shopping, prepping, and monitoring. And that comes with a magnetic cutlery set (so that you never end up eating your yogurt with the dull side of your knife).
Prepd Pack's "revolutionary new take on a lunchbox” is “intelligently designed” and “beautifully crafted” to "make lunch time more enjoyable" and, here's where the real money is, to give you full, iPhone-supported control over what you're eating for your midday meal.
Based on the $2,657,139 they've raised in funding since launching on Kickstarter in January, it's safe to say that they're filling a need.
By purchasing a Prepd Pack, scheduled to ship out in October, you not only get the physical objects (a wood-paneled, briefcase-esque sleeve; modular containers that fit neatly inside of it; aforementioned magnetic cutlery), but you also get access to the Prepd app. This is where you can select chef- and nutritionist-designed recipes and export them to a customizable grocery list. Once you do the prep work, you won't have leftovers: The recipes are designed to fit in the containers perfectly, for zero waste and built-in portion control (you can buy extra containers sets so you can make everything for the upcoming week all at once).
You can browse the meal plans by diet type, health goal, or ingredient, and—since the app knows exactly what you've eaten—keep count of "in-depth nutritional information," which gets streamed into your iPhone's HealthKit.
And there's a social sharing component to it, too: You can share lunch ideas—or show off your "Instagram-worthy lunches" (the founders' words, not mine)—with other Prepd Pack users and save recipes to "curate your own meal plans."
What does the Prepd Pack—and its incredible crowd-sourced financial backing—say about us? We want complete control over what we eat (not news) and we want to be able to show it off to all of our friends (also not news)—and we want to check off both of those boxes in the most convenient, time-efficient way possible. Even if that means that our lunch boxes don't leave room (figuratively or literally) for fun or spontaneity or the occasional ice cream sandwich lunch.
I'm going to hold out on investing in a lunch box until it can pack my lunch for me; send a little buzz through my system when I should eat it for the most impactful energy boost; and show me who—without leaving my seat—in the office would be willing to trade cooked lentils for cookies.
Shipping of the Prepd Pack starts in early October. If you can't wait 'til then—or if you want to "take control" of your lunch in other ways—here are a few of our best lunchtime tips:
Written by: Sarah Jampel
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4 Comments
"In-depth nutritional information" sounds like a fast-track to Anxiety Avenue.
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